Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/143

Rh aforeſaid, of the printer or publiſher of it from the preſs, and for the hander of it to the preſs, one hundred pounds.’

Mr. Marvel begins this book with a panegyric on the conſtitution of the Engliſh government, ſhewing how happy the people are under ſuch wholeſome laws, which if faithfully obſerved, muſt make a people happy, and a monarch great. He obſerves, that the king and the ſubject are equally under the laws; and that the former is no longer king than he continues to obey them. ‘So that, ſays he, the kings of England, are in nothing inferior to other princes, ſave in being more abridged from injuring their own ſubjects, but have as large a field as any of external felicity, wherein to exerciſe their own virtue, and to reward and encourage it in others. In ſhort there is nothing that comes nearer the divine perfection, than when the monarch, as with us, enjoys a capacity of doing all the good imaginable to mankind, under a diſability of all that is evil.’

After ſlightly tracing popery from earlier times, he begins with the Dutch war in 1665; but dwells moſt upon the proceedings at Rome, from November 1675, to July 1677. He relates the occaſion of the Dutch war, ſhews that the papiſts, and the French in particular, were the true ſprings of all our councils; and draws the following picture of popery.

‘It is ſuch a thing, as cannot but for want of a word to expreſs it, be called a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility, which is otherwiſe decent to be uſed in ſpeaking of the differences of human opinions about divine matters; were it either open JuadiſmJudaiſm [sic], or plain Turkery, or honeſt Paganiſm, there is yet a certain Bona Fides